I take heart from Waleed Aly’s gold logie win. Not for anything it does or says about Australian television which on the whole dumps an appalling amount of odious splodge nightly into the lounge rooms of millions of Australians. Frankly, The Project, generally speaking is part of that banal pollution. It’s only saving grace is Aly’s editorials.
It is those, which find an even larger audience in the cyber world, coupled with Aly’s newspaper articles and radio appearances that Australians find so refreshing. Arguably, the TV and online audience represents a snapshot of the voting public.
Votes for Aly were a vote for substance and moderation. It shows that Australians are mindful and wary of the Trumpized neo-conservative bile that informs the politics of this country as much as it does the United States.
The votes for Aly give me hope that ordinary Australians see through the inhumane stance that both major political parties have adopted toward refugees. It gives me hope that moderates in both the ALP and COALition might find voice and present a unified opposition to Australia’s continued defiance of its humanitarian obligations.
It is probably too fanciful to ask that Aly forms his own political party and becomes an Australian version of Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Aly for PM.